Tony Gallippi
| Tony Gallippi | |
|---|---|
| Born | Tony Gallippi |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Chairman |
| Employer | BitPay |
| Known for | Co-founder of BitPay |
Tony Gallippi is the co-founder and current Chairman of the financial services company, BitPay. The company is the largest bitcoin checkout processor globally.
Gallippi was responsible for founding BitPay in 2011 along with Stephen Pair.
Contents
Career
Co-founder of BitPay in 2011, with the aim of providing checkout services for the bitcoin cryptocurrency.[1] BitPay first featured in the news following a bitcoin conference in Prague, Czech Republic, which took place in November 2011. Following the conference, the company grew quickly within its first year from 100 merchants to 1,100 merchants using their service.[2]
Since the foundation of BitPay, Tony Gallippi has been responsible for a number of large organisations joining the financial services company as a merchant. Also during the initial surge of popularity of bitcoin from 2012 onwards, Gallippi featured regularly in the media discussing bitcoin and BitPay.[3] Around the same period, comparisons were drawn between BitPay and PayPal, with some including CNN, suggesting that one day processors like BitPay could eventually replace conventional online payment systems such as PayPal.[4]
In 2013, BitPay became the largest processor of bitcoin currency and over 80 employees.[5] This was following a number of high-profile deals, which included WordPress becoming a merchant. Gallippi helped broker a deal with WooCommerce, for the creation of a new module for BitPay. The module would help assist with the fulfilment of Amazon.com's web store purchases.[6] The move allowed BitPay and their partner in the module, WooCommerce, begin to focus on bitcoin processing for e-commerce.[6] In 2013, he featured on Atlanta's TechEdge programme with co-founder Stephen Pair, discussing BitPay.[7]
Gallippi was invited by the US Senate to speak about bitcoin and the financial market in November 2013.[8] He stated that the credit card industry cost the United States around $20 billion each year as a result of fraud.[9] During the same year, Gallippi featured at Bitcoin 2013, where he discussed the fall in bitcoin price during that year.[10]
In 2014 he stated that the company had over 80 employees[11] and the goal was to “have set a goal to enroll one million merchants by the end of 2016.”[12] During the same period, Gallippi was responsible for reworking the company's pricing plans.[13] The plan's would now be offered for free with no fee payable by the merchant. The move was an attempt to show merchants that bitcoin is better than standard payments, since credit card payments can have fees unto 5%.[14]
Investment
As the Chairman for BitPay, Gallippi has been responsible for brokering a number of investment deals for BitPay. These deals have typically come in the form of investment rounds and have included the likes of Hong Kong business magnate Li Ka-shing,[15] Richard Branson and Jerry Yang.[16][17]
See also
References
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- ↑ BitPay Scores Record $30M in Funding, Aided by Richard Branson Betabeat.com 5/15/2014 by Molly Mushine
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